Only a few Australian universities offer MBA programs online. Those that do, report significant demand. For example the University of South Australia’s biggest and fastest growing MBA cohort is virtual students. At any given time there are about 300 students studying online, compared with about 200 on campus in Adelaide. The development is driven by the mining boom in Australia, reckon the school’s administrators. Many people working in the country’s fast growing resources sector fly in and out of work in remote communities near mining sites and study in the evenings while there is not much else to do in the outback.
Alice Preston, Director at Curtin’s Graduate School of business at the University in Perth says demand for online learning had “gone through the roof”: around 14 per cent of students complete their whole MBA program online and 70 per cent of accepted 2011 applicants plan to undertake at least one unit online. The feedback she receives from students is positive: “Some students say that learning online can sometimes be even more effective than learning in the classroom”.
Therefore more and more business schools in Australia deliver parts of their programs online as well as offline. Macquarie Graduate School of Management in Sydney for example plans to deliver online educations from next year, Griffith University in Brisbane will offer some MBA units online from 2013, Queensland University of Technology plans to follow suit by 2014.
Where online programs are available students will typically do 25 to 30 per cent of their studies online and the rest by coming to class. That way they can juggle the need for flexibility and will still profit from intense group discussions when in class.
However, there are still many critical voices when it comes to online MBA programs, particularly the top-tier providers are not willing to jeopardize their brand by giving up on face-to-face teaching. The director of academic programs at Melbourne Business School, Jane Prior, told the “Australian Financial Review”: “The skills employers are crying out for, especially in MBAs who become their future CEOs, are leadership, communication and interpersonal skills – how do you develop these on your own in front of a computer screen?”
Indeed, in Australia the traditionally delivered MBA degree is known for a culture of rich debate and networking opportunities. Therefore Macquarie Graduate School of Management MGSM feels the biggest challenge in going online is to maintain a high degree of interactivity. Guy Ford, MGSM’s deputy dean says: “If we went for self-paced learning, which many online programs really are, our students would probably walk away from us in droves”. Therefore Ford aims at a program in which online students would still be able to interact with their peers through net forums and group projects. The school plans to offer three core units online from next year. If that test run turns out to be a success then all ten core unit will be available online eventually.
In a shaky economic environment, where many students do not want to give up on their jobs, Vice-Chancellor at Griffith University, Michael Powell observes a huge trend globally for online programs in business education. “What most mature-aged students want is a mix and that is where we are going strategically”.